Don't get me wrong, the barn is only sixteen feet from the floor to the tippy-top of the roofline. The hayloft is probably seven feet off the ground. But the days when I could hang from my hands off a flat ledge are long gone. Even my armpits is pushing it. It was jump or stay stuck.
So I sat there for a few minutes. There were two unopened bales of hay up there with me; I thought if I could push them off onto the floor and get them to land more or less side by side then I'd have a platform to jump onto, only about a three foot drop then. I pushed the bales off, and they landed about four feet apart from one another, and moreover, they landed on their sides, so they'd be extra tippy. Now if I tried to jump onto a hay bale I'd almost certainly go over backwards and whack my head. Plus, the goats all rushed over and started eating the hay. I didn't want to land on a goat and kill it.
More thinking. Then I saw the chicken's roost along one side of the barn. It's a twelve foot dowel affixed to the wall with little cross braces, but thankfully it's a 1 1/2 inch dowel and the cross braces are made out of pieces of 2x4. It does sag under the weight of twenty chickens, but I'd have to risk it. Hanging by my armpits, I managed to get one tippy toe on the dowel, and from there it was a piece of cake. Basically. Okay, so I got chicken shit on my ass. Big whoop.
I can so totally see you doing that! If I were you, I'd thing about leaving a pair of gloves and a rope up there for the future. That way you could tie it off and slide down without ripping up your hands.
ReplyDeletetotally see it, can you? Hope you got a good laugh out of that little vision.
ReplyDeleteHow funny! I felt right up there with you....
ReplyDeleteMaple